Ah, I should have known. There are no villains in Porfy no Nagai Tabi. A simple fight over the toilet doesn’t cause one to become mortal enemies. Everyone has his or her own reasons for acting. I so expected the mayor to come up with a terrible scheme to humiliate or hurt Porfy. Instead, he just looked for the quickest way to get rid of him, aka help him search for Mina. I totally forgot that possibility existed as well.
This episode was really heart-warming. It starts as Porfy helps around Iralia’s farm with all kinds of chores, and looks at the trees which in a few weeks will give off some ripe fruits. This reminds him of home again, and gets his spirit down. At the city hall meanwhile, Maximilian removes a poster that has been put over Mina’s poster, as the Mayor runs into him again, thinking how ridiculous it must be to keep searching, through Maximilian says that any piece of information is welcome.
Unfortunately, at this point there’s still no sign of Mina. Iralia’s father makes a proposal, that if Porfy doesn’t end up finding Mina, whether he’d stay with them or not. Porfy, however, declines and says that he’s going to find Mina, no matter what. Iralia’s father figures that this would have been the obvious thing to say. Then Maximilian returns home, and he brings along Daisy, and Daisy proposes to introduce Porfy to her father’s shop. In there, Maximilian orders a new bag for Iralia, to give her for Christmas.
Daisy then mentions how she wants to see the new bag when it’s done, though Porfy then notes that by the time the bag finishes, Porfy will already be gone, though Daisy says that he shouldn’t be thinking that way, and when he finds Mina, he could come back to this city again. They then visit what I guess is the storehouse for Iralia’s farm, or something similar. Maximilian then starts telling ghost stories, as the Mayor suddenly pops up with the news that he might have seen someone with news about Mina. Ironically, he’s carrying the same bag model that Maximilian ordered.
Porfy wonders whether the mayor still is angry about the time with the toilet, but the mayor quickly changes subject. Apparently, a guy who works at a local funfair thinks he saw a person who looked like Mina. Porfy immediately wants to go to that person. After Porfy shows this person the picture of Mina, and tells her that a guy with cards was with her, the guy says that this might possibly have been Mina, and they went to a city in the west.
After hearing this, Porfy wants to leave immediately. Iralia suggests Porfy to leave the next morning, but Porfy wants to chase after Mina as fast as possible. With that, comes saying goodbye, but first Porfy gets to ride a merry-go-round along with Daisy. As it’s the first time he’s seen such a thing, he had the time of his live while riding it.
A bit later, Porfy says goodbye to Iralia’s parents, who give him a bit of payment for the chores that he did, and Rebecca is actually crying to see him leave. Iralia, Maximilian and Daisy then drive Porfy and Apollo to the station. When they do, they say goodbye and Porfy heads off to the train, with Daisy being the saddest to see Porfy leave. After waiting a bit, however, Porfy finds out that the train he was supposed to take was cancelled. A freight train which was on the station is also heading in the same direction, so Porfy jumps on it and lands on a pile of bags, and the episode ends.
Porfy no Nagai Tabi has two different faces: heart-wrenching drama and warm slice-of-life. This episode showed the best of the latter, where the themes of saying goodbye in the final parts brought a really nice conclusion to this arc that I really didn’t see coming. With this, I also have no idea what the creators have been planning for episode twenty six, because it doesn’t look like it’s going for the big climax now that it just rounded up the longest arc ever since Porfy started travelling.
